


Imagination

by TheGreatLibraryFangirl (Mazeem)



Series: Gaps in Canon [5]
Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Angst, Dysfunctional Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Suicide Pact, also th girls have exactly zero body modesty, derealisation, fight me, glain is on clean-up duty, i love these two but it is, khalila loses it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2019-10-02 04:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17257946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazeem/pseuds/TheGreatLibraryFangirl
Summary: Set during Smoke and Iron, just before they take on the dragon automata.Wolfe doesn't think the children know quite how badly he was affected by the second spell of imprisonment. Good. That's how it should be. But sleep steals his composure away and it's up to Santi to anchor him back into the real world again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of book quotes are relevant here. This scene is set directly after Khalila and Glain get back to the embassy without Dario, and Wolfe says:
> 
> “All of you, go rest. There’s nothing more we can do tonight. Morning will come soon enough.”  
> (Smoke and Iron, page 339 in my copy, very end of chapter 31)
> 
> The pact that Wolfe mentions is here:
> 
> "But promise me that tomorrow there's no prison. No Qualls. If it comes to that - "
> 
> "If it does," Santi said, "then it comes for us both."  
> (Smoke and Iron, page 337 in my copy, end of chapter 31)

“All right, Chris?” Santi called from the bathroom. Wolfe nodded, then forced a reply from his lips so that Santi wouldn’t peer out of the bathroom and see that Wolfe was exactly where he’d been left five minutes ago. 

Standing in front of the bed, staring at the nightwear the ambassador had kindly provided him. 

He didn’t want to get undressed. It was a stunningly stupid bit of brain chemistry. 

The bedroom door was locked (he had to phrase that thought carefully in his head and remember that he knew where the key was) and Santi was probably less than a second away. All that was true, and still even the thought of removing his shirt was making his heart race and his palms sweat. 

Clothes as vulnerability. What a … fascinating new mental aberration. 

He managed it eventually, though he was so tense that it was difficult to bend his arms and legs. His heartbeat was throbbing in his ears and it took any spare scraps of self-control to stop himself panting out loud. 

Clothes off, other clothes on. Surprise, surprise, nothing sprung out of the shadows at the sight of his bare chest and legs. Fancy that. 

Finished, he dropped to sit on the bed and put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, pulling his hair to try and shake himself out of it. 

“Congratulations,” he snarled at himself. That was a mistake; he sounded like he’d just run a marathon. He tried to control his breathing. In and out; oxygen, carbon dioxide. Fucking sparrows can do this more effectively than you right now, Chris!

It felt like only a minute had passed when he flinched, hard, at Santi’s hand on his shoulder. Shit. 

Still, he‘d recovered enough equilibrium to take his hands out of his hair (they ached) and raise his eyes to meet Santi’s concerned gaze. He didn’t volunteer any information, and for once Santi respected that and didn’t push. Santi did say,

“Bathroom’s free,” which was such an inane comment that it almost made Wolfe want to laugh. 

“Free of what, cockroaches?” He shook his head and stood up, and concealed the sudden lightheadedness because he’d been expecting it. “I’ll shower tomorrow. I just want to sleep.” That was true. He let a little of just how true it was bleed through into his voice.

Santi’s eyes softened. “Of course.” 

****

Having fallen asleep with an almost desperate speed and intensity, Wolfe woke up several hours later completely and utterly disorientated, with a racing heartbeat and a severe case of the shakes. 

Dark. Lying down. Details around him were slightly fuzzy.

On the balance of probability, he was probably still in his cell. 

His memory protested, fed him images of Nic and the children waiting to greet him and the Brightwell boys. 

What were the chances that he had actually escaped? Lower than the chances of his imagination creating these scenarios. 

His mind had always worked faster than the rest of him, and once he’d made that deduction he couldn’t trust anything his body was telling him.

Yes, he was apparently in a bed, and that was apparently Nic snoring gently next to him. But the problem was that he created very good illusions to cope with being imprisoned, so how did he know what was real? 

He ran that circular terror round his exhausted mind a few times until he was shivering with the strain of it.

“Nic?” His voice cracked, hard. A wail was trapped in a painful ball in his throat. He grabbed Santi’s shoulder and shook it, then gave up and wormed his way closer until his cheek was pressed against Santi’s back and one arm was over Santi’s side, against his abdomen. Fuck it. Overprotective imagination or not, one way or the other, this would soothe him back to sleep. 

Santi shifted. Grunted. Found Wolfe’s hand and linked their fingers with a satisfied little sound. The contact jolted a strangled little sob from Wolfe’s lips, and he shoved his face hard into Santi’s back to shut himself up. 

“Chris?” Santi rolled over. The concerned look on his sleepy face pierced Wolfe like a knife. A knife made of hope, and it hurt. He’d almost rather not care. He screwed his eyes shut. 

“Chris, mio caro, look at me.” Santi’s hand was warm on his cheek. 

Wolfe didn’t dare. If he opened his eyes onto cell walls right now, he would break. 

“I’m here.” Santi’s lips touched his forehead. His stubble was scratchy. “I’m here and I’m real, I promise you. I swear to you.” He moved, and suddenly he was lying on top of Wolfe, arms and legs bracketing Wolfe’s and holding most of Santi’s weight safely off him. Their noses touched. It was a lot of sensory input and it made him shake again. 

“Nic.” It seemed to be the only word in his vocabulary right now. Perhaps that was fitting. 

Santi was warm and solid and, frankly, fairly sweaty, and Wolfe let that soothe his battered mind as much as it could. They passed a little while like that. 

“I’m going to turn the light on, is that all right, Chris? That generally helps.”

‘Generally helps’ in times like these, when Wolfe lost his grip on reality and was left scrabbling through the cracks in his mind to find the scraps. 

He almost had enough presence of mind to feel ashamed about that. 

Somehow Santi reached the bedside light without leaving his position over Wolfe, and the world went red behind Wolfe’s eyelids. Santi stroked his cheek again.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Never, Wolfe said to himself. But he had grown up telling his feelings that they could go and fuck off, so it only took a few minutes of lying in his Santi-cocoon before the panic receded enough that he decided he could try to open his eyes. He pushed Santi until he moved away, and tried to not focus on how weak he still felt.

Eyes open. Room. Bright. 

Blurry. He blinked to try and make that go away, but it didn’t. 

Probably time to start expanding the usage of my reading glasses, he thought all of a sudden. The banality of the thought pulled a string inside that would have led to a chuckle in other circumstances. Out of the habit of a lifetime, he turned to share the thought with Santi.

Seeing him in full colour was a shock; but a good shock, like an unexpectedly flavoursome wine. It did him good. He leant his head on Santi’s chest and stared around the room. 

He was nearly there, he thought. He remembered … curses, he remembered Neska’s death. A lovely young silver band Scholar. His fault. That ripped another shudder from him, but that in itself was perversely reassuring. 

Morgan, incarcerated in her own way. 

Jess, nowhere to be seen. 

Dario, captured. 

Death, even more looming than usual. 

What a shitty ‘comforting dream’ this would be. 

Nearly there. Just couldn’t take the final step and admit that he was out of the cells. The threat of pain had always been worse than the pain. 

Santi always could read him well. “You’ll never have to see the inside of a cell again. I promise you.” 

There was something dark and desperate and broken in Santi’s voice just then, and strangely that was the final decider. Flawless dream Santi didn’t sound like that. His breathing was slightly unsteady, too, and his grip just a bit too tight. He might have stopped himself beating Jess up earlier, Wolfe thought, but that didn’t mean he was fine either. 

“I love you, Nic.” He clumsily tilted his head and kissed Santi’s chin, the only part he could reach from this position. Then he sat upright and rubbed his eyes - which really didn’t help the blurriness. “I’m back. Sorry.”

“You know you never have to apologise for that,” Santi said. “You’re back quickly.” There was genuine surprise in his voice, and it pissed Wolfe off. Was he that weak that Santi expected so little of him?

“Real life is too shit to be nice.” That was all the explanation he would give. It didn’t assuage the sudden, overwhelming lightning crack of anger, so he tried something else. “Sorry, Captain, did I disrupt your careful strategising about where to hide my gibbering husk while you all hare off to get yourself killed?”

Santi flinched. Maybe it was ‘gibbering husk’. Maybe it was ‘getting yourself killed’. Maybe it was even ‘Captain’. Either way, Wolfe allowed himself a moment of brutal satisfaction before the shame hit. He put one hand on Santi’s thigh in silent apology, then sighed. “I’m going to -”

“No.” Santi’s voice was firm. Wolfe gave him a flat look of disbelief, but Santi’s dark eyes didn’t move. “You’re not getting out of bed and reading until you can’t keep your eyes open.”

Wolfe opened his mouth, despite not being certain of what he wanted to say. “But-”

“I know it’s what you always do, Chris. But you’re right. I am a captain, or I was, and I have done nothing but strategise since Khalila shook me out of my funk.

(Wolfe had to hear that story later. If there was a later.)

“We simply don’t have time. It’s the early hours of the morning already. You’d read until well past dawn, and I will not let you go into the field without resting.” 

“What will a few hours’ rest do, Nic?” Anger rippled painfully through Wolfe’s veins, dragging up ragged remnants of adrenalin. “Will it mend my broken mind? Will it make any of us less likely to die tomorrow? And what the fuck do you mean, you won’t let me?”

In answer, Santi turned over the hand that Wolfe had left resting on his thigh. It was trembling, very slightly.

“I could stop you getting out of bed without trying.” Santi’s voice was detached and professional and it made a chill run down Wolfe’s spine. “Hell’s bells, I’d back Morgan to be able to detain you with her bare hands, the state you’re in. So, yes. You would be less likely to die if you rested.” 

The chill spread like ice across his chest and down his arms. “You said no more cages, Nic.” He looked at Santi, and saw the familiar awful fight in his lover’s eyes: the urge to keep Wolfe safe against all costs precariously balanced against honouring Wolfe’s own desires. 

He remembered their little … pact the previous evening. How that cut the Gordian Knot of it all. 

Santi swallowed. Seemed to crumple, just a little. “No more cages, Chris.” He rubbed just above his left eye, the way he always did when he had a headache. “Get a Blank, bring it back. Read it in bed.”

Normally that suggestion would have brought them both to a screaming fight in seconds. Wolfe hated reading in bed. It tainted the reading experience by associating it with sleep. Too much of it and your brain started to expect that it would only read a few chapters before shutting down. It was only for people with poor mental stamina and no dedication to their reading material. 

But it was better than carrying on this unbearable conversation. 

Getting up was more difficult than he’d expected. He was still sore and bruised and weak, and the adrenalin comedown wasn’t helping either. Santi didn’t so much as offer a supporting hand. 

Fuck it, he'd powered through most of his life by sheer spite, he could managed a few metres to spite Nic. 

By the time that he got back into bed, he was trembling more obviously. He let his fingers pick him a book out of sheer habit, and tried to blink his damned eyes into focus. 

Only four chapters in, and he was starting to skip entire paragraphs and startle awake as his hands went lax and the Blank dipped. 

Fuck it. He lay down next to Santi’s silent bulk and read with his head on the pillow. It was a clear white flag, and the exhaustion which had stalked him so relentlessly during his imprisonment soon dragged him under again. 

He might have felt Santi put an arm around him as he drifted off, but then again, he might have just imagined it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “All of you, go rest. There’s nothing more we can do tonight. Morning will come soon enough.” - Wolfe, end of chapter 31, Smoke and Iron.
> 
> Khalila can't accept this. Not again. 
> 
> If they won't help her save Dario, she'll do it herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Compared to the previous books, Smoke and Iron Khalila is almost supernaturally calm, composed and Getting-Shit-Done. I 100% headcanon that this is a deliberate front she's putting up (which I expect will continue into Sword and Pen) and this is the first of hopefully several explorations of what happens if she lets that control slip.

Ever since they’d been captured and put aboard the ship bound for Alexandria, Khalila had been keeping her emotions under tight control.

If they survived, there would be time enough later to cry, and to be afraid, and to shout at people. For now, she had decided to focus all her energy on simply getting things done.

But then Dario had been captured, and _hurt_ , and they just wanted her to … to go to _bed_. 

Everyone was looking at her and it made her skin crawl. Her bloodstained hem felt twice its usual weight and she had to fight to to keep from staring at it. 

Goose-pimples crawled up her arms and legs. Her arm throbbed like a second heartbeat where Glain had kept a tight hold of it until they were safely back in the Spanish carriage. It would surely bruise.

What bruises were blooming on Dario's skin, even now?

“I’d like to go and check on Thomas,” she said. That would get her out of sight. She could make a plan from there to get back to the Library. 

Wolfe nodded.

“We’ll be upstairs if you need us.” He tried to catch her eye but she busied herself with unnecessarily tightening her hijab until he gave up. Her fingers couldn’t quite stop shaking, no matter how hard she tried to make them.

Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, in her sternum, in her fingertips, and yet it still wasn’t loud enough to drown out what she was imagining was happening to Dario _right now_. 

“Try to sleep, Khalila.” Santi’s voice was warm and worried.

She hooked her mouth into a tiny smile. It was the best she could do with her lips tightly sealed around her raging thoughts. 

_How dare you? You, who would tear the world apart to find Wolfe and keep him from suffering, how dare you look at me like a hysterical girl as I stand here with my fiance’s blood barely dry on my dress? I should have let you stew in your own guilt on the ship!_

She watched the two of them walk back up the stairs. Wolfe had been masterful at hiding his exhaustion, and even now he was walking briskly up the stairs, but she could see it now in the way that he used the bannister to haul himself from one step to the next, the way that his feet came dangerously close to scuffing and tripping on every step. 

Good. She felt guilty and bitter for thinking that, but, good. She needed the pair of them to be distracted if she was to escape. 

“May I escort you to the workshop, my lady?” The ambassador’s voice drew her attention. She turned to consider him. His clear family resemblance to Dario nearly ripped her in two, but she saw how she could use that. 

“Normally, I would appreciate the company, ambassador, but I would like to go alone. Would you direct me instead?” As he started to protest, she released her hold on her emotions just enough for a sob and a tear. “I am so worried for Dario, and you …” She waved a hand at him awkwardly. 

Alvaro stared at her uncomprehendingly, and she gritted her teeth. Anger and panic were boiling inside her like pressurised steam and she didn’t think the next thing to come out would be ladylike weeping. _Come on, you ponderous fool_. 

“You look like him,” Glain explained from where she was stood just inside the doorway, with a strange little shrug. “A little.”

Khalila’s thoughts tore down the middle, disrupted. Half relief that finally someone was using their brain, and half plan-altering, blood-chilling fear: she’d forgotten about Glain.

“Oh. Of course,” said Alvaro. He didn’t apoplogise for something that he couldn’t help, which she approved of. 

He started to direct her. She stopped listening after the first set of doors, and turned her attention to how to deal with Glain. 

She would undeniably want to accompany her to see Thomas, and once they were both walking together the chance of Khalila managing to slip away en route was miniscule.  

She tried to think past the throbbing countdown in her head. 

No, it could still work. A few minutes’ difference at this stage wouldn’t matter too much - it _wouldn’t_ , she insisted as her subconsciousness helpfully presented to her the memory of those bloody handprints on the wall. 

She twisted her hands together to stop herself frantically fidgeting. _Think, Khalila, think_. 

There was a high chance that she could leave Glain in the workshop with Thomas. Particularly if he was showing signs of stress - and she bitterly hated herself for that thought, for wishing that upon him.  

Someone called her name and she blinked. Glain and the ambassador were staring at her. 

“Did you listen to any of that?” Glain asked. It was said bluntly, as usual, but there was worry in her eyes.  

The best lies are full of truth, Khalila told herself, and let one of her looping panicked thoughts rise to the surface:  

“I was wondering how long he was lying there, motionless, to make a pool of blood on the floor like that.” Her voice shook once, on ‘pool’.  

Stunned silence from both of them. Glain reached out and gently rubbed Khalila’s upper arm in what, for Glain, was a strong attempt at comfort. There was a nauseated, helpless expression on her face. 

It all made Khalila want to scream. She didn’t have time for this.  

“Can we go and see Thomas now?” she asked.  Something must have shown through in her expression or voice, or perhaps Glain just couldn’t bear her own emotions either, because she clapsed both hands behind her back and smiled a very fake smile and said, 

“You just want a decent hug, don’t you?”  

Khalila tried for a smile. She didn’t think she was very successful. 

Glain sighed and fished out her Codex. “Go and find him. I’ll be right behind you - I just need a quick word with Alvaro.” 

She gave a few directions and Khalila did try to listen this time, she did, but she couldn’t hear a words over the violent pounding of her pulse. Was Glain letting her walk off unescorted? Was this actually happening? 

She wandered a few steps away, almost in a daze, then wrenched herself back together and tried not to walk too quickly through the double doors at the back of the hall.  

Glain will be watching, she reminded herself, as the doors swung shut behind her and her heart leapt into her mouth. There is a window just here, between the two of us, and so I have to make one more move towards Thomas before she’ll trust me.  

From somewhere she pulled the second direction she’d been given, and made sure to walk close to the large window as she turned to her right.

Finally out of sight, she turned and started marching towards the nearest exit she knew about. Once she was outside, she would get over the wall – it couldn’t be that hard – and head back to the Library. 

Then find Dario. Save Dario. Somehow.  

Deep down she knew that it was unlikely, but she’d rather be thrown in a cell alongside him than let him think that he was alone.  

If he were even still conscious.  

If he were even still alive.  

Their group had stayed in the embassy for long enough that she was familiar with the layout, but she’d felt safe and she’d never memorised all the outside doors, and she hated herself for that right now. There could be a closer exit, or a better concealed one that she was missing.  

She hurried along winding corridors, trying to listen for sounds of pursuit over the frantic sounds of her own body. Had she heard footsteps? Or was she just imagining things?

 Then the side exit that she wanted came into view and her vision contracted down into a narrow tunnel. 

_Go_.  

Down the corridor she ran, hitting the door with her shoulder in case it was locked, to try and force it. 

It flew open unimpeded and she stumbled and nearly fell, but sheer momentum kept her upright. 

There was the wall and, yes, there was the little bench she remembered from a peaceful afternoon reading here. It felt like a lifetime ago. 

The wall was still far too high, but she hoped that with the speed she’d built up she might be able to jump and grab the top. 

Failing that, maybe she could make a rope of some kind out of her hijab and a bit of her dress. She’d sacrifice modesty for this. She’d sacrifice anything to see Dario and hear him call her a ridiculous endearment again. Allah forgive her. 

Those thoughts passed in less than a second, and now she was approaching the bench to use it as a jumping-off point. She predicted her stride pattern and cursed – she was going to hit it with her weaker leg.

And then something hit her from the side with an almighty blow, knocking her off her feet and clacking her teeth so hard together that her world went white.

Within three sickening, jolting rolls, she knew the person wrapped around her was Glain. 

_No, no, no!_ Failure sank like a stone in her stomach.  

Khalila had trained in self-defense even before their postulant year (it had gone hand-in-hand with her childhood sword training) and she’d tried to practise every day since.  

She knew that she was quite good but she also knew that most of the power of self-defence came from taking advantage of speed and surprise, and this time she was the one who’d been surprised. 

Still, she fought as hard as she could as they rolled over and over, as dirtily as she could, with nails and teeth and elbows and knees.  

But Glain was an implacable wall of muscle; she took everything Khalila could dish out until their joint momentum faded enough to allow independent movement, at which point she flung Khalila onto her back hard enough to make her vision blur and pinned her there painfully. Her eyes were hard and focused.  

Khalila was so angry that for a strange second she lost her Greek, which she’d spoken since the age of five, and instead snarled the filthiest Arabic curse she could think of into Glain’s face. All of her emotional control of the past few days was in shreds. 

She strained against Glain’s hold until all her muscles burned and knotted, but she might as well have tried to push the embassy wall down with her bare hands.  

Glain shouted back at her in Welsh and it didn’t sound complimentary either. Lacking any other option, Khalila threw her head back and screamed her anger and fear and desperation to the empty sky. 

_Dario, my love, I tried_.

Then Glain slapped her across the face and covered her mouth with one hard, callused palm.  

“Shut the fuck up or you’ll bring the night patrols in thinking the Spanish embassy is murdering someone!” 

Khalila shut her eyes so that she didn’t have to look at Glain. A little part of her brain started running calculations on whether she could, in fact, twist an unsuspecting patrol to her advantage, but the rest of her knew better. 

It was done.  

She tried to bring her rapid breathing back under control, but it was difficult with Glain’s hand over her mouth. Her throat felt raw from the scream. Distantly, she heard Glain’s Codex ping with a message. 

Thankfully Glain must have seen and felt her breathing problem, because with a whisper of, “Not one word,” she took her hand away from Khalila’s mouth and put it back on her shoulder, pressing her into the ground.  

Khalila panted for a minute or so. Her entire body was pulsing to her heartbeat and the ground felt soft underneath her.  

“Gods, you were faster than I thought you’d be,” Glain muttered, quietly enough that she might not have even meant Khalila to hear, but bearing in mind that their faces were inches apart, hearing was unavoidable.

“How could you?” Her voice came out hoarse and choked and breathless. Glain’s eyes widened.

“Excuse me?” Her voice shot up high and loud. “Ex-fucking-scuse me, how could _I_? How could I stop you from running off into the night on a fucking suicide mission?”

Khalila scowled. “Could you get off me? You’ve caught me. It’s done.”

Glain shifted her weight so that Khalila’s thighs didn’t feel like they were being drilled into anymore, but she didn’t get off. “Wolfe made it pretty clear we should have sat on Jess to stop him running off. I’m sure he’d appreciate me following the order, since you’re being an idiot too.”

“I’m not an idiot!” Khalila said hotly back. 

“No?” Glain took her weight off Khalila’s legs but kept pressure on her shoulders. “Want to share which part of the last five minutes was a sensible, rational, considered decision?”

“He’s _hurt_ , Glain!” Her eyes filled with tears and in trying to blink them away she just sent them trickling down into her hair and ears. “He said he would have fought everyone in the Cadiz Serapeum if they’d taken me.” Her breath caught in a sob and a wave of nausea rolled over her. “I should do the same for him.” 

“Save me from bloody lovesick idiots!” Glain flung herself upright and paced to the wall and back again. “You wouldn’t go out in some fucking blaze of glory - _they know we’re here now_. They’d have the automata out looking for you, Garda swarming everywhere, and they’d dogpile you and haul you off and I couldn’t defend you against more than two or three - and then they would probably make Dario watch you being tortured until he told them exactly where we all were! And we all know how well that went for us before!” She whirled at the end of her pacing route and glared at Khalila like a harpy. 

Khalila pushed herself up into a seating position. She ached all over. 

Everything Glain said made sense. Particularly the bit about her being used as leverage against Dario, after she’d learnt from Anit aboard the ship that Santi was to be used in the same way against Wolfe. 

But that had been very detailed. Very … thought out. 

_“I couldn’t defend you against more than two or three,” she’d said._

_“I’ll go get him, sir,” she’d said to Santi, setting her jaw._

“Why won’t you come with me?” Khalila clenched her fists and felt cold dirt pile under her nails. “You obviously want to. You’ve obviously thought about it.”

Glain rubbed her forehead. “We all _want_ to, Khalila. Surely you can see that?”

Khalila looked away from Glain and stared at the ground and bit back hard on the phrase _Not enough, clearly_.

Glain sighed, heavily. They lapsed into an uneasy, tense silence. Khalila's mind whirled, discarding useless idea after useless idea.

Then she jumped and half leapt to her feet as the ambassador pushed the half-open door that she had run through and came out into the garden.

Light spilled from the embassy and in silhouette his similarity to Dario made her heart twist in her chest like it would break free. 

“Ambassador! You startled me!” she said, inanely. He looked from her to Glain, his face too shadowed for her to see his expression.

She followed his gaze to Glain. Her nails had gashed open Glain’s cheek and the tip of her nose, and there was a large weeping friction burn on her bare forearm. Her clothes were coated in dust and mud. 

Looking down at herself, Khalila realised that she couldn’t look much better. Her entire dress was coated too. At least her long garments had protected her from the friction as they rolled. She felt battered and bruised and raw. One of the half-healed burn blisters on her hand had torn open and a mess of clear fluid and blood was oozing into her sleeve. Now that she was looking at it, she could feel it stinging, and when she flexed it the pain was sharp enough to take her breath away. There was dust in that too. The embassy Medica wouldn’t be happy with her. 

She realised with a jolt that her hijab had come almost totally loose. That hadn’t mattered when it was just her and Glain but alarms were screaming now that the ambassador was here. She fumbled to fix it, and needed to use a few of the spare pins she always kept clipped to her neckline. When she raised her gaze again, to her relief the ambassador wasn’t looking at her. He was still looking at Glain.

“Are you all right?” he asked her. Khalila whipped her head back towards Glain, and caught her pressing her fist to her head and pulling a pained face. She’d not seen Glain show pain like that unless it was serious. 

“Glain?”

At her voice, Glain smoothed over her expression. It wasn’t a complete success, and Khalila realised with horror that she’d seen that milder expression on Glain’s face several times since their arrival at the embassy.

“I’m fine. Just got a headache from hitting the ground so hard.” She got to her feet, and now that Khalila was watching carefully she could see that movement wasn’t as fluid as normal either. 

“I’d be stupid to run away again,” she said, awkwardly, hating the taste of it on her tongue. “You don’t need to pretend you’re fine.”

Glain gave her a flat, mistrustful look. “You’ve been fairly stupid already.”

Khalila bristled at that, despite herself. One corner of Glain’s mouth twitched in something that probably wasn’t a smile. Blood dripped off her chin. 

“You won’t try to get to him again?” Her voice was light and almost mocking. “In the twenty-seven games of chess you’re playing in your head at any given minute, you’re telling me none of those pieces have shifted at the news that I might not be at my best?”

Khalila couldn’t quite figure out what to say to that. It was an excellent analogy, and, as ever with Glain, brutally accurate. Glain watched her struggle for a second, then let out another sigh and turned to the ambassador.

“Seems like now would be a good time,” she said, vaguely. He nodded, and took his Codex from his pocket and an expensive-looking pen. He scribbled a short message, and a second later Khalila nearly leapt out of her skin.

Spotlights flared to life, and the sound of disciplined footsteps smacking into the hard ground rattled her already sensitised nerves. A loud voice shouted something. The accent was thick for Khalila’s largely written knowledge of Spanish, but she got the gist. _All clear, sir_. 

She blinked and looked away from the dazzling lights, spots dancing in front of her eyes. Before she had regained her composure, the ambassador started speaking. His voice was stern. 

“There would be no carriage this time, Scholar Seif. Quite the opposite. The guards have your name and your description.” 

He paused, and she felt so trapped that for a moment she couldn’t breathe with it. The Garda? He’d given their names to the High Garda? Oh, she was so tired of their safe havens betraying them!  

But no, he was continuing, and she clearly hadn’t got that quite right: 

“Wathen suggested that you might try to flee. When Dario returns to us, which I believe he will, I do not wish to face him and say that I allowed the woman he loves to go a pointless death.” 

Dario’s name in Alvaro’s voice, such confidence that he would live, scraped across her soul like chalk on a blackboard and she shuddered.  

“He’d probably stab you,” Glain said, in the gap left by Khalila’s silence. 

The ambassador smiled. “He spends half his life trying to stab me.”

He held out his arm to Khalila. “Please, Scholar Seif. Will you come inside and allow my Medica to see to your wounds?” 

“Wounds.” Khalila and Glain scoffed in perfect unison. She exchanged a quick, faintly amused look with Glain, and saw to her concern that Glain’s expression was still pained.  

If she went to the Medica, Glain would go too.  

“Very well.”

Perspective of the situation started to finally edge its way back into Khalila’s head as she and Glain walked arm in arm to the Medica’s room, and it wasn’t pretty. 

It was embarrassing. 

This was the final night before they attempted to overthrow the Archivist, when they should be trying to make sure they were at their best. Yet here the pair of them were, traipsing to the infirmary to get cleaned up. 

Khalila’s neck was already tight enough to suggest she’d have whiplash tomorrow. Not to mention the friction burns and cuts and bruises, and re-opened burn blisters. 

She imagined the disappointed look on Santi’s face when he saw them tomorrow, with their scrap written on their skin, and her stomach sank.  

As she’d anticipated, the blonde middle-aged Spanish Medica was distinctly unimpressed by her torn blister. That was fair enough. 

Khalila screwed her eyes shut as the raw skin was painfully irrigated with clean water several times and probed with sharp tools until the dust and grit was gone. 

If a little part of her brain was still screaming at her that she deserved this pain and more for abandoning Dario, she could ignore it again. 

The Medica frowned down at her hand, holding a dressing in one hand thoughtfully.

“This should stay open, to breathe and to heal faster,” she said in her heavily-accented Greek. “But you will be leaving us tomorrow. So, protection.” She nodded to herself and started wrapping Khalila’s hand quickly and efficiently.

Khalila couldn’t quite tell tone through the accent, but she thought the Medica somehow knew more than she should. 

“Thank you,” she said. That covered … everything. The Medica nodded and smiled. The smile slid off her face as she turned to Glain.

"I told you that you needed to rest and not strain yourself!" She gave her a block of ice wrapped in a towel.

"I _have_ been resting!" Glain snapped back, pressing the towel to her temple. The Medica gestured to her and Khalila's messy states and replied, 

"Very restful, I am sure!"  

"It was my fault," Khalila said hurriedly, at the same point that Glain said, 

"It needed to be done."  

The Medica rolled her eyes and called them both fools in Spanish, albeit in much politer language than Khalila was used to hearing from Dario.  

She let the dagger of his name pass through her and out the other side, drew a painful breath and focused on Glain.  Time to chase this loose thread.

"I didn't know you were having issues with your head." She tried not to sound accusing, and failed. 

Glain gave her an unimpressed look.  

"Good. That was the aim." She tweaked a piece of dirt from her upper lip. "Santi suspects and we've had words, but no-one else knows." 

"Then how ..." Khalila nodded her head towards the Medica. 

Glain sighed and closed her eyes.  "A day or two after we got here, I thought I'd found a safe spot to ... have a rest. I hadn't." 

"Indeed," said the Medica, "Bathrooms do not make good resting places. Not for more than one hour." 

Glain opened one eye, just a crack. "The Spanish and secrecy. I swear I will punch you if you don't shut up." The Medica grinned, and handed Glain a little vial, the contents of which Glain downed in one swallow. 

Khalila didn't need the dirty 'keep your mouth shut' look that Glain sent her way then, but she thought she deserved it. She'd read enough between the lines to know that Glain's headache had eased recently until their ... scuffle had brought it raging back.  

_It's my fault_. 

"Stop that. I can tell when you're beating yourself up." Glain didn’t even have her eyes open. Sometimes she amazed Khalila.

"I'm sorry," Khalila said, pointlessly. 

"Shut up. It's not important.” Glain shifted the ice on her head and sighed. “Neither is Dario, or your family, because if we don't succeed tomorrow, we'll all die and none of it matters. So there’s no point in you dashing off on a suicide mission on your own, when quite frankly we have a bigger one planned tomorrow. All right?"

Khalila felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up inside her. She held it in while the Medica mopped up Glain’s cuts and scrapes, until they started insulting each other in their native languages and she knew just enough of both to start giggling. Glain snorted with laughter in response, and winced.

“Go to sleep, girls,” the Medica said, in a long-suffering way.

Khalila wasn’t surprised that there was a female guard waiting outside the Medica’s room to escort them to their bedroom. Alvaro was taking no chances.

She started undressing as soon as the bedroom door was closed. She was exhausted mentally and physically, and now that her mind was letting her accept Wolfe’s original order, it sounded very appealing. 

Except that the cleaner had obviously come into the room and now she had no idea where her nightgown was. 

Under the pillow?

Under the covers?

On the dressing table?

She saw in the mirror that Glain was still standing by the door, holding the second icy towel to her face.

“Are you all right?” she called, and turned, ready to take Glain’s arm and guide her to the bed if necessary.

Glain blinked at her. Yes, the light was clearly bothering her. 

Still, there was something guarded and tight in her posture. 

Khalila slowed her steps and let her hands lie loose by her sides. She couldn’t be less threatening than this, as bare as the day she was born. 

“You should sleep too,” she said gently. Glain sighed.

“Well, you certainly won’t get very far looking like that.” It was almost a non-sequitur. Except it wasn’t. 

“Glain. I’m fine. I’m staying here.” She was getting used to pushing back the thoughts of Dario now. She might even be able to sleep until the nightmares hit. 

Hold on.

She narrowed her eyes.

“Glain Wathen, have you hidden my nightgown?”

Glain grinned and relaxed, at last. She yanked off her shirt in one very masculine move.

“No, but I have spotted it, yes.” She threw her shirt onto her bed, and Khalila saw her nightgown poking out from underneath Glain’s pillow. 

They shared another distinctly hysterical giggle, then finished getting ready for bed in comparable silence.

 "Goodnight, _chwaer,_ " Khalila said, a little nervously, as she turned off the glows. One final apology.

"Still dreadful, but you’re improving. Goodnight.”

Apology accepted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thank yous to RosalindInPants, without whom I would have given up on this at least a fortnight ago. 
> 
> There should be a third chapter to this, back to Wolfe. We'll see. 
> 
> (Oh also, there's a lot of my 'Glain's head is fucked-up' headcanon in here. She's just had so many head injuries. So MANY.)
> 
> Please let me know what you thought of this with a kudos, or a <3 // >:( in a comment, whatever. It's kicked my arse for two months.

**Author's Note:**

> This is very, very likely to have more chapters over the same awful night. Khalila needs some love.
> 
> I'm aware that this is fairly similar to my other Library fanfic, oops. Never mind, got a couple of different ideas planned for 2019! (One of them doesn't even focus on Wolfe, holy shit.)


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